Blog entry for:

that i am not unique and taking the risk to show others that i am not, is one of the themes that has been running through my head lately. as i start writing this little ditty, i keep coming back to the homework i did yesterday about the THIRD Tradition. after a little bit of clean time, i still keep coming back, in fact i keep staying. if the only requirement is a desire to stay clean, a desire i have had for quite some time, is there something more? is this really a place i want to stay? could i walk through life without a recovery program? is it just superstition that keeps me here, or is it really something else? when i go down those paths, where i end-up is in a place of seeing my life when i got here, through the lens of what has happened since i finally became a member and started actually doing the work. the answer is almost always the same, i have become more than just another recovering addict as a result of applying the program in my life and becoming open to letting others into my life. membership, for me anyhow, has given me a keen awareness of what it was that i was missing for all those years of using and fronting that i was “okay.”
for the longest time, i believed i was “different” enough that i had to keep everyone else out of my stuff, emotionally anyhow. living in that isolation taught me nothing but how to keep hiding in plain sight. when i finally became “well” enough to start the process of identification and take the chance to let others in, i began to see that maybe, just maybe, i was not all that different from my peers. i tried, time and again to deny that i was “broken” or that i had any sort of “drama” in my life, growing up. my step work has led me to a new understanding of how i got here and where i can go from here, as i start my SIXTH STEP. just for today, i am okay with my life, as it is. just for today, i am happy to be clean. just for today, i see that i may be unique but i am more like my peers than i ever believed i was before.

∞ DT ∞